As many of you know, I had the awesome opportunity to travel to Playa del Carmen, Mexico back in February. It was a wonderful trip full of great people, amazing food, and beautiful sights. When traveling I love to experience new things and capture them in different ways. When I learned that I would be traveling to Mexico I immediately knew that I had to bring my plastic Diana, or as I call her, "Dirty Diana". (That is for all of the Michael Jackson fans!!)

The Diana camera is a very unique little film camera. It is made by Lomography and shoots 120mm film. It is famous for light leaks, chopping people's heads off with its not-so-accurate viewfinder and its minimal settings. The Diana is also known for creating vibrant colors, double exposures and dreamy images. So naturally, when I was packing for Mexico, I threw her in my camera bag!

Throughout the whole trip I had constant questions about my plastic camera; Dirty Diana is always a conversation starter! Most photographers never believe me when I tell them that it is a medium format camera! She may be small and plastic, but she is mighty! Take a look at some of the dreamy photos she got!

This past weekend I went to Artscape in Baltimore for the first time ever! All I can say is that it was awesome, and I will be going back every year! It was so much fun seeing all of the artwork and meeting the artists behind it. I had so many great conversations with different people about their techniques and thought processes. My favorite technique that I would like to learn is metal working, that will be one of my goals for this winter. If you have never gone to Artscape I highly recommend you go next year! Here are a few photos from the day I went of different artists and their work, enjoy!

For the past three months I have been interning at the Baltimore City Paper as a photographer. This is my last semester of school and I felt the need to get a little more photo experience under my belt before I graduated, so the City Paper was the perfect opportunity. I have learned so much over the past three months, but today I will be focusing on on-site/environmental portraits. An environmental portrait is a portrait of your subject in their "space", and by space I mean where they work or a location that tells a lot about him/her. I have definitely run into some obstacles while creating these portraits, but I am going to tell you how I overcame them!

For this assignment I had to photograph Cricket Arrison because she was going to be in an upcoming play in Baltimore about a woman living in an jungle. Well, when I got to her studio it was a big white room. This posed a problem for me because it had nothing to do with her play. I looked around for something that could help me and saw that she had brought in some vines from outside. The only problem with that was...where do I put them!? What I ended up doing was hanging them over a door and then shutting the door which created this backdrop of vines. As you can see the photo on the left says nothing about Cricket and the play, but the photo on the right has a sense of the environment of the play.

For this second example I was sent to a Piano Tuner's house to photograph him and his work. The space was relatively small so I had to think of new ways to work. I started off at ground level photographing him from the side and was just not happy with the results. So I took a moment, stepped back, and observed what he was doing. I then noticed the beautiful red accents within the piano and knew that I needed them in my photo. In order to get the angle I wanted I had to photograph from above. So I kindly asked for a stool and used that to get a higher angle. The top photo shows more about the tuner himself, but the bottom photo shows just how intricate the piano and his work are.

So far the main things I have learned from creating these portraits are:

Always observe your surroundings for something you can incorporate in the photo

Don't rush the process

Look at the small details!

Don't be afraid to ask for objects that will make your job easier

Know who you are photographing! (The most important in my opinion!)

If you have any questions about any of the information feel free to send me an email or leave a comment!